1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a body-insertable apparatus that acquires an in-vivo image and an in-vivo information acquiring system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, in the field of endoscopes, swallowable capsule endoscopes have been developed. A swallowable capsule endoscope has an imaging function such as an image sensor and a wireless function. After being swallowed from the mouth of a patient and until being naturally discharged from the body of the patient, the capsule endoscope sequentially captures in-vivo images while moving through the organs including the esophagus, the stomach, and the small intestine depending on peristalsis (see, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open Nos. 2003-19111 and 2001-231186). While the capsule endoscope moves through the body cavities, the image data acquired by the capsule endoscope is wirelessly transmitted to the outside sequentially and stored in a memory provided to an external receiving apparatus. A doctor or a nurse displays the image data stored in the memory on a display to diagnose the patient.
To further facilitate finding of a lesion during a diagnosis, there is a demand for such capsule endoscopes to capture more images than those captured by a conventional capsule endoscope by increasing the frame rate. To satisfy the demand, there has been proposed a capsule endoscope in which the amount of data to be transmitted is reduced by compressing the image data, so that the time required for transmitting the image data is shortened and the frame rate increases (for example, see International Publication No. 2003/010967).